One thing to try is to understeam the milk -- I find that (especially with the stock tip) I got milk that was too thick ten times as often as I got milk that's too thin, and it's a useful comparison to see what the results are that way. Until you can get the milk to the right texture, you will have an awful time making art, and for me at least, I got it too thick an awful lot of the time.

As for pouring technique, there's lots of videos on youtube -- some of them are in slow motion, which helps with the details -- what I do, for what it's worth, is:

1. cup starts at about 30 degrees from horizontal

2. pour from high up (about a foot above the surface), straight down into the center of the cup, until the coffee is pretty close to overflowing (cup still tipped, so there's spare room left). You need to be high up so that the cup fills up but the milk goes through the surface and doesn't start to leave a pattern yet.

3. now, all at once, flatten the cup out, bring the jug down to the surface of the coffee so the milk starts floating, keep pouring, and start wiggling from side to side a bit. As someone else mentioned, keep pouring fast -- that's what pushes the milk away from where you're pouring, to make the bottom leaves of the rosetta

4. at 'the right time' (I'm not sure when this is, but about when there's enough bottom leaves, I guess), slow the pour down a bit and start moving back towards the other side of the cup, to make the 'stem' of the rosetta.

5. when you get to the far side of the cup, lift the jug back up high, again and draw a thin line through back to the other side.

I think that's roughly right as far as basic technique goes, but there a lot of little subtle details of timing and amount of flow,and getting those reliably right is difficult.

Now that steaming is less difficult with the lever instead of the knob, I am able to steam and pull at the same time. I still have got a bit more foam than I want for latte art but the foam is so much smoother. Oscar had the power and now it has the control.

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